O&R reports 700 in Orange County without power Thursday

Power has been restored to most of the people who lost it in Orange, Ulster and Sullivan counties as a result of Hurricane Sandy.

BY NATHAN BROWN

Power has been restored to most of the people who lost it in Orange, Ulster and Sullivan counties as a result of Hurricane Sandy.

Thursday morning, Orange and Rockland was reporting 700 out in Orange County and 30 in Sullivan. New York State Electric and Gas said they just had five customers out between the two counties. O&R says that everyone who lost power because of Sandy will have it back by the end of the day Saturday, and that, when there is a big outage, "scattered isolated areas where devastating damage has occurred are the most difficult to resolve, and as a result are among the last to return to service."

Wednesday's nor'easter caused some new power problems closer to the coast and east of the Hudson River, where it snowed more, but mostly spared this area.

Since Sandy, people who spent a week or more without power and some politicians have said they are unhappy with the waits to get power back — Gov. Andrew Cuomo on Thursday called for a "ground-up redesign" of the state's utility system.

"Nobody gives you any information," said Fred Salzmann, of Blooming Grove, who has been out for 11 days. "They don't know what they're doing."

More people's lights have been coming on every day — more than 11,000 O&R customers in Orange County have gotten power back since Monday.

Joseph Gomez of Pantelop Road in Bloomingburg had his come back Wednesday night, after a week and a half without power. Most houses on his street came back on a week ago, except his house and one neighbor's house.

Gomez spent a week calling O&R and local politicians before their power came back.

"All they had to do was plug us in," he said. "That was it."

Richard Cinque, of Winterton, a retired Consolidated Edison worker who lost power for almost a week after Sandy, said he is sick of hearing politicans criticize the efforts to restore power; he said the workers are trying their hardest and the utilities brought crews from out of state to help.

"Can you fathom how much work has to be done to put these people back on again?" he said.

Meanwhile, U.S. Sens. Kirsten Gillibrand and Charles Schumer and Rep. Nan Hayworth are urging the feds to grant New York's request to add Orange and Putnam counties to the declared major disaster area. So far, the declared area includes New York City, Long Island, Westchester and Rockland.

Adding Putnam and Orange would qualify people there who suffered Sandy-related losses for a multitude of federal programs they're not eligible for now.